


The Long Memory of Winter

by Bronnwyn



Series: Deleted Scenes [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers for Season 7, anyway i don't know where i'm going with this, enjoy, think of this as a deleted scene from the episode
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 05:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11525946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bronnwyn/pseuds/Bronnwyn
Summary: A mini-series of "deleted scenes" from each episode of Season 7, centered around the relationship between Jon and Sansa. Will contain spoilers for each episode, accordingly.





	The Long Memory of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's back (back back), back again...I got inspired by the newest episode and I figured I'd make this an ongoing thing. Stay tuned!

Too often, Sansa Stark was trapped in a cage of her own making. Its bars were formed by the tragedies that befell her, yes, but the door had been opened long ago. When she arrived at the Wall, embraced Jon in her frozen arms.

He’d unlocked that cage for her.

She opened the door.

But sometimes…Sometimes, Sansa found herself too frightened to step out of it. What awaited her beyond that threshold? What new terrors lurked in those velvet shadows? She wanted to be like her lady mother, brave as her Stark name.

But sometimes…

Sometimes, bravery was just another word. Intangible as the wind and as imperceptibly felt.

Sansa stood in the godswood, underneath the trembling shadow of the heart tree. Its melancholy face matched her own. Here in this sacred place, she did not feel the need to rearrange her features into something more pleasing. No one watched her here. Not the gods she did not pray to, not the men who leered when they drank too much, not the ghosts of those who haunted her nightmares.

Not even Littlefinger, who had eyes everywhere but here.

Sansa Stark was at peace. A serenity as crisp as the snow at her feet filled her belly as fully as a meal. She drew in a breath, eyes watering at the sharpness in her lungs, then let it out. No one was watching her here. Except for the person whose boots crunched in the snow somewhere behind her. Not Littlefinger. Even in the snow he was quiet as the rat he was.

“I thought you didn’t pray anymore?” came Jon’s mumbling brogue.

The tension drained from Sansa’s stiffened shoulders. “I don’t,” she said. “I simply came here for some peace and quiet.”

Jon appeared at her side, dark head bowed. “Ah. I understand.”

Did he? She cut him a glance from beneath her snow-dusted lashes. “No, you don’t.”

He did not understand the desperate craving she had for just a _moment’s_ worth of nothingness. A spot of calm in the storm that was her life. She often caught herself wondering what it was like for him when he died. What _that_ calm was like. That absolute nothingness, that void into an oblivion she longed to reach out and touch.

Just for a moment.

A taste of oblivion.

That was all she wanted.

A wisp of a breath passed Jon’s parted lips. “Are you going to be angry with me about this for the rest of the night?”

“I’m not angry with you,” she said. She meant it. Very rarely did she say things she did not mean anymore. There was no point. Her courtesan’s mask mattered little here in the North, and she was thankful for it. “I’m annoyed.”

Jon laughed. She took a secret joy in the warmth she heard in it. They could not stay _annoyed_ with one another for long. “Oh, aye? What’s the difference?”

“If I were angry,” she said evenly, “we would not be having this conversation.”

“What would you have done instead then, hm? Thrown me out of my own godswood?”

“No, I would have had _Brienne_ throw you out.”

They shared a smile, and all at once, the schism between them had been healed. Laughter, real laughter, was such a fine balm for life’s many pains. What a shame she didn’t engage in it very much.

Jon’s gloved hand settled on her shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat. “Sansa, you…”

She what? Pressing her lips together, she lifted her gaze to meet his. “What?”

Jon hesitated. Sansa could see herself reflected in his weary eyes. Their breath mingled together in the frozen air. “You…You are invaluable to me. Not just your counsel, Sansa, but _you._ There must always be a Stark and Winterfell and here you are.”

Here _he_ was, more like. That stabbing jealousy that sliced through her insides every time someone named him King in the North stabbed at her even now. She was not the Stark everyone wanted to see. _He_ was. “Yes,” she said anyway. “Here I am.” She pushed his hand away, though she did not let it go. “Here _we_ are, and here we must remain. You are a good leader, Jon, and our people respect you, but I beg you, _hear me_ when I speak. I know Cersei, Littlefinger, the game of thrones better than anyone. You need me.”

As much as she needed him.

He bowed his head again, gaze fixed on their hands, her fingers clutched around his. Porcelain, ivory, steel. She was steel here in this godswood, with the hear tree as her witness, and she would not be afraid.

“You’re right,” Jon said at last. “I need you. We need each other. It would do us well to remember that from time to time, I suppose.”

Of course. The North always remembered.

“We have so many enemies now,” she said, repeating the very words he’d used against her so many moons ago. The North always, always remembered.

Jon nodded, a smile touching his usually brooding mouth. “We do. And we’re going to have many more if the dead breach the Wall.”

The night was dark and full of terrors, after all.

Perhaps that was why Sansa did not fear the Others as fiercely as the rest of her kinsmen did. She had seen the true terrors in the faces of Queen Cersei, the bastard Ramsay Snow. Monsters, she knew, were real as the winter was long.

What was a White Walker compared the wrath of a queen?


End file.
